The Trinamool Congress has decided to deploy its booth-level agents for a fresh, door-to-door verification of deleted voters’ names in Bhabanipur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s assembly constituency, after nearly 45,000 electors were struck off the draft rolls under the Election Commission’s special intensive revision (SIR), party sources said.
Election Commission data show Bhabanipur had 2,06,295 voters as of January 2025. The newly published draft rolls list 1,61,509 names, indicating that 44,787 voters — nearly 21.7 per cent of the electorate — have been deleted.
The Commission on Tuesday released West Bengal’s draft electoral rolls following the SIR exercise, which saw over 58 lakh voters removed across the state on grounds including death and migration, and voter profiles redrawn across districts and border belts ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.
TMC leaders are particularly upset over a large number of voters being marked “dead”, “shifted” or “absent”.
“The party leadership made it clear that no valid voter’s name should be deleted under any circumstances. Every deleted name must be physically verified,” a TMC source said.
Bhabanipur comprises Kolkata Municipal Corporation wards 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82. Party sources said wards 70, 72 and 77 saw especially high deletions, with ward 77, a minority-dominated area, flagged for special attention.
A dense urban seat with many residents originally from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, Bhabanipur will see party workers accompany affected voters during the claims and objections process, expected to begin shortly.
The TMC asked local units to continue running the neighbourhood-level ‘May I Help You’ camps to assist people with documentation, form-filling and hearings, and said volunteers should visit homes if required.
The developments in Bhabanipur come amid widespread deletions across south Kolkata.
Draft rolls show that four politically high-profile assembly segments – Bhabanipur, Kolkata Port, Ballygunge and Rashbehari – together recorded over 2.16 lakh deletions, nearly 24 per cent of their combined electorate. When the SIR process began, these seats together had around 9.07 lakh voters.